Minded Systems

SCOM PowerShell Library

After spending many years with System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2012 I've come across a consistent shortcoming of the application; PowerShell. While PowerShell is well supported in SCOM 2012 its ability to be built upon isn't always obvious and documentation is sparse (if even available). With that said, I routinely find myself needing to create various different SCOM management pack components in PowerShell with no direct or straight forward way to do so outside of Discovery with the "TimedPowerShell" discovery provider. This need lead to the creation of my "Microsoft.Windows.PowerShell.Library" management pack; designed specifically for making SCOM management pack objects ...

Sorry IoT hubs, its not personal

The "Internet of Things" (IoT) market has been around as a bit of a wannabe-mainstream consumer product category for a while now. Sadly it continues to go through the same old cycle; shiney new up-n-comers wow an audience followed quickly by total non-adoption by consumers. Generally speaking, the main show-stoppers have always been (in one form or another) compatibility and security; or lack there of.
Most IoT systems and home automation kits are built around the general idea of a hub-and-spoke architecture. In recent years there has been near fever-pitch debate over the ideal IoT hub. While I respect that this sort ...

Google’s machine learning coup on UI design

It's been a couple weeks now since Google I/O 2016 came to a close and with very few tangible products released there has been a lot of time to come up with some crazy theories on what Google is up to. So here's one of my left-field theories on where Google is headed. I believe that Google intends to use its machine learning to generate user interfaces for most standards apps.
This year a lot of focus was brought on the Google's application of machine learning as well as the new 'conversational UI'. Previous years there was a lot of "voice"; ...

MVC just got an e from G

Google I/O 2016 is winding down and we're all getting a chance to digest the bevy of announcements. Google Home created a long of buzz and Daydream (aka. Android VR) got a lot of attention. Buried in the pile was a somewhat smaller announcement that may come with some pretty significant long term impacts; Android Instant Apps.
Android Instant Apps are being touted as rather innocuous bits of code added to existing apps to enable functionality without installation. Google intends to remove the visual interface requirements by inter mediating the app experience entirely. Android Instant Apps are designed to extend to the MVC ...